Thank you for joining me again this evening for these nightly podcasts. I am Dr. Harrison Campbell main chiropractor and Restoration Health at Premier in Sugar land chiropractors office. Performance podcast in hopes that you can take tips and tricks to your daily life to have a healthier happier life style. And in tonightís podcast we will be discussing neuralgia.
Add his heart and a router is a fancy term to describe nerve pain. Tonight we will discuss a few the reasons patients suffer from neuralgia and signs and symptoms of neuralgia.
first letter start with the signs and symptoms of neuralgia including me anatomy behind it. Nerves or what our body uses to conduct signals or impulses to control muscles to release and stations such as touch temperature pain and even to help you know where you are located in space. The last one knowing where you are located in Space comes from our ability known as proprioception. Proprioception as sugar land chiropractors now is the ability for your body meaning your brain to know where the body is at all times. This is what enables you to have your eyes closed and take your index finger or your pointer finger and touch it to your nose successfully. This proprioception is when allows you to walk up and down the stairs without staring at your feet. This proprioception is what allows you to navigate in a dark room without being able to see where your hands or your feet are.
The way proprioception works is we have a nerve century in our joint which reads essentially the angle of the joint it tells your brain that my knees bent at X degrees in there for my lower leg is going in this direction. This is a massive oversimplification but I do not want to spend too much in depth and proprioception and That can be in its own podcast in and of itself.
Moving back to sensory are nerves or receptor endings transmit touch temperature pain through those nerves to the spinal cord up to the brain where they were interpreted. For movement impulses from the brain cramp or through the spinal cord to the nerves to the particular muscles which are supposed to be moved. Again this is an oversimplification as sugar land chiropractors will say but this is what the nerves are doing on a consistent basis without us even knowing.
Now nerves are very sensitive. What this means is it does not take a lot to irritate them and once theyíre irritated they will let you know that they were irritated. The simplest form of neuralgia and an often used example by sugar land chiropractors is most people have suffered from his when you hit your funny bone. When you hit your funny bone you were actually hitting the owner nerve which does not like to be hit. Once it is hit you get that short burst of pain in there can be some lingering numbness and tingling in the hands depending on the severity of the impact.
You take this example and apply is to an injury which affects the nerve and you will have similar symptoms on a greater scale. The most common injury to affect the nerve is a disc herniation. Now sugar land chiropractors will tell you that very rarely does material from the herniated disc impinge on the nerve and they would be correct. In most disc herniation cases the inflammation from the injury is what irritates the nerve and produces the neurological symptoms. Now I did say most cases. There are cases where the disc material physically impinges on the nerve root, but again this is not the majority.
We have discussed disc herniation in a prior podcast but let us provide a quick break down of this injury. The disc has two parts, the interior material which is a jelly like substance. This jelly is what provides the actual shock absorption for the disc. The second part is the tough fibrous shell which surrounds the center of the disc. These outer fibers are what are injured and allow the disc to herniate.
Now lets move away from the disc herniation to another area which can cause neuralgia. There are certain nerves which in their path to and from the spinal cord travel through muscles. These nerves are greatly affected by the tonicity or how tight these muscle are contracted. For example one cause of sciatica, a form of neuralgia in the lower extremity as sugar land chiropractors can tell you is a condition known as piriformis syndrome. What occurs in piriformis syndrome is the sciatic nerve which travels through the piriformis muscle becomes irritated due to a muscle spasm. Unless the piriformis muscle is relaxed the symptoms of neuralgia will continue to affect the patient.
A third type of injury which can influence the nerve and create neurological problems is stretching of the nerve. This injury is normally called a stinger and is associated with football when the shoulder is depressed and the head is forced away from the depressed shoulder. What happens in this instance is stretching or traction of the nerve itself. Which sugar land chiropractors will tell you will irritate the nerve and create the associated symptoms. The nerve functions in the same regards as muscle tissue which is strained. Once this nerve tissue has been stretched to the point of injury it must heal. Anyone who has suffered a stinger will know there was weakness in the arm on the side which suffered the injury, numbness and tingling and the other typical nerve symptoms.
I do hope you go tonight informative and educational. If you know someone or if you yourself suffer from the router or nerve pain please contact Restoration Health today and order to schedule an appointment. If you or someone you know needs the services of Sugar land chiropractors please call Restoration Health today as well so that we can schedule an appointment. Thank you once again for Joining us and I hope to see you have a good night.